Engines, including diesel engines, gasoline engines, natural gas engines, and other engines known in the art, may exhaust a complex mixture of pollutants. The pollutants may be composed of gaseous and solid material, including particulate matter, nitrogen oxides (“NOx”), and sulfur compounds.
Due to heightened environmental concerns, engine exhaust emission standards have become increasingly stringent over time. The amount of pollutants emitted from an engine may be regulated depending on the type, size, and/or class of engine. One method that has been implemented by engine manufacturers to comply with the regulation of particulate matter, NOx, and sulfur compounds exhausted to the environment has been to remove these pollutants from the exhaust flow of an engine with a filter. The filter may trap these pollutants, and those trapped pollutants may build up in or on the components of the filter. The filter may be regenerated to burn off the built-up pollutants, such as, for example, soot or unburned hydrocarbons. However, regeneration may fail to burn off ash and/or other particulate matter, which may clog the filter, thereby causing filter functionality and engine performance to decrease. Moreover, regenerating the filter through conventional methods may take up to eight hours or longer, depending on, for example, the size of the filter, the configuration and material composition of the filter element, and the type of heat source used. Such a long regeneration period may be undesirable in some work machine environments. In addition, the temperatures required for regeneration may be in excess of 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit). At such temperatures, soot contained within the filter may spontaneously combust, resulting in damage to the filter and/or its components.
At least one system has been developed to clean particulates from a filter. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,900,043 to Grandjean et al. (“Grandjean”) discloses an electrostatic filter with a process for cleaning the filter by vibrating a gas in a filter enclosure, such that the confinement provided by the filter enclosure is not broken during cleaning. The system in Grandjean includes a filter having a membrane on its top, behind which there is an acoustic wave generator. Starting the acoustic wave generator will fill the contents of a horn with vibrations, and will vibrate the air located under the membrane. The vibrations of the air adjacent to the filter elements detach dust accumulated on the filter elements so that the dust falls into a bin. However, the system in Grandjean may have disadvantages associated with it. For example, the addition of the acoustic wave generator to the filter increases the size and/or weight of the filter. Furthermore, the system in Grandjean may also require the use of bypass valves and/or multiple filters to ensure proper function, which may increase costs and complexity of the system.
The present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.